We have some property we hunt in North Central Florida and have several food plots. We plant peas in the summer and last winter we planted wheat, oats, rye, and Tecomante Max Attract. We have permanent stands on the larger plots and 99.5% of the deer fed in the sections of the plot that had the Max Attract. The deer would walk thru the other sections to get to the Max Attract. I think we are done with the rye, wheat and oats. I would like to try something else this year and were wondering if you have any suggestions?

We would also like to try something else in the spring, but are not sure what to plant. We tried planting peas in March, but they grew so slow, the deer ate them up before they has a chance to get a foot tall.

What kind of peas/beans is in max attract ? The picture on the tecomate site looks a lot like Australian Winter Peas and rye. Says it has chicory as well.

Why not stick with it if the deer prefer it ?

For the fall, you might give shot plot , pro graze or ultra forage all have Brassica which I think produces more forage per acre than anything I've seen to date. But don't count on it as a highly attractive plot until they figure it out. Which may take a while. I now have them eating it in the spring after a month of growth.

For the fall you might also try Australian Winter Peas (AWPs) mixed in with your oats and rye. Being in Fl, you can also get away with Iron/Clay or Soybeans planted in Aug, they should make it until late Nov through bow, muzzle and first few weeks of gun. Broadcast some rye, AWPs and brassica into it in Oct and when the peas/beans are gone or get frost bite, the rye , AWPs and brassica will keep going.

For the spring, not much beats soybeans , iron/clay and a little corn/sorghum for them to climb on. Use plot saver for 6-8 weeks and you should be good to go through July/Aug unless itís a small plot. BioMaxx seems to be some good stuff but isn't cheap. I have some going and the corn is starting to take off, hoping with recent rain the beans will catch up.

The other option is clover which I have not gotten to grow well down here yet, but working on it.

I had a pretty good stand of crimson clover I planted last fall. I let it stand until it seeded out then I turned it under. Crimson is what you see the deer eating on the side of the roads in florida during spring. I really don't think any clover will do well in the summer heat here,someone correct me if I am wrong. Another option is perennial peanut vine. I was going to plant it this past spring but the guy I was going to get it from and I couldn't get our schedules together. He will plant it but it is a 10 acre minimum. I will try to plant it again next spring. As a matter of fact,just two hours ago I saw a doe and a young buck feeding in the edge of a perennial peanut field,beautiful sight. I am also a big fan of aeshynomene(deer vetch). It was well used on my place last year. It is expensive but it reseeds so if you get a good stand it will come back. It dies off after a frost and comes back in spring. Cooper seed sells it. I am trying a lot of climbing soybeans and peas with tall sorghums and corn and sunflowers this year to try to provide cover as well as good browse so that maybe they will come out more in the day. They hit mine mostly at night but I hope to change that. I hope to try some ladino clover this fall.

The Max Attract we planted did not have any peas in it. Wheat/oats, chickory, and some kind of clover. We did plant the aeshynomene last spring and the deer loved it but it did not get big enough to reseed. The australian peas we planted did good, but the deer did not seem to care for them. We have several large plots and have planted some lab lab in a couple of the plots to see how they do this year. I think we planted 4 tons of peas this year and in the wetter places, planted aeshynomene.

We are more interested in getting the deer better nutrition in the late winter early spring, time period when they really need it.(Feb-April)

In my limited experience,if I were after nutrition during this time frame, I would go with clover first. If your ph is low,crimson clover would be the best bet in my opinion in these parts as it is more tolerant of lower ph. Now that my ph is coming up I have full intentions of planting ladino and a mixture of other clovers hopefully across my whole plot. What I am after is building the soil as well as good nutrition. I have just finished planting my plot in tall yet hopefully attractive crops that I hope will make the deer more frequent during daylight such as corn,sorghum climbing peas and beans. We all know that deer frequent fields that soybeans have dried and feed on them in the fall. I am going to leave all of this standing and plant just a few strips of oats mixed with clover and a small plot of brassicas to hopefully feed through the winter. The next part is an experiment,I want to try to broadcast clover across the whole thing and if it does well I want to go in just as soon as deer season is over and mow the tall stuff and give the clover a chance to take off for the rest of spring. Don't know how this theory sounds but I want to try it.I want the clover to help build my nitrogen levels as well as feed the wildlife. As mentioned earlier whatever the deer ate up is what I would be wanting to plant a whole lot of. If they love it pour it to them.

Last week I asked about everyone's sucess rates with plotsaver. After trying and trying not to officially consider it a waste of time and money I have to after this weekend. It now seems like the white ribbon is almost an attractant. Even after multiple applications, with pretty much no rain, in 3 different food plots, 4 weeks in a row the plotsaver has been very unaffective. Any ways I've decided to just start planting about double the recommended amount of seed. We've planted Lab Lab, rackmaster deluxe, buckwheat, lots of sunflowers and more cowpeas and soybeans all over the farm. The first picture I'm showing is 4 month old rackmaster that underwent 3 months of drought. Needless to say it is riddled with weeds and grass. The cowpeas have come back somewhat and it seems the deer dont know they are there and insist on eating the easily seen immature crops we have planted. If anyone has any experience with deer not finding cowpeas or a similar situation let me know. Today I put out a few pounds of corn in the middle of that plot to hopefully encourage them to snoop around in the weeds and find the good stuff. There is another picture of joint vetch/alyce clover that was overtaken by a weed that I think is called coffee bean. We used a wick with 1RR/1water last week to kill the tall stuff and hopefully let the joint vetch come back and thrive. What little is there has defintely been munched on. Ive been making my own mixtures for the second 5 acres I've been planting with lablab, sunflower and buckwheat thrown in. With the original rackmaster deluxe mix(which is like 10% sunflowers) it seemed as if the deer preferred the sunflowers over all others so we decided to plant alot more since they are incredibly cheap, relatively high in protein and also beneficial to birds. I didn't want to ramble this much but this is our first year really doing this and always like to hear other people's comments, especially in the deep south. We're about 25 miles from Gainesville. Our main issue is definitely not being able to keep the deer out at all really. This isn't the end of the world but it seems like with bare areas being created we will have additional weed problems down the line. All of this stuff is alot of work and money but it's also a whole lot of fun. Also I believe were probably going to do alot of the shot plot this fall. It grew very well this spring. Thanks and Thank God we have some more rain coming in!

Rekon I Should Have Read All Before Asking About Plot Saver,sorry John. How About The Portable Electric Fence That Runs On A 6 Volt Battery ? Seems We Have The Same Problem With Deer Eating The Plots As Soon As They Pop Up.

Yesterday I was showing someone one of our small 1/4 acre plots planted in iron and clay peas with plot saver. I didn't have enough ribbon to cover the plot because its much longer than wide and about 75 yards by 15yards wasn't protected at one end. The unprotected portion is stems all the way up to within 10 ft of the ribbon then its nice bright green growth. The ribbon goes diagonally at that end and so does the eaten pattern.

I have found the deer do not like to graze much of anything if its mixed with heavy grass or weed growth. They seem to always move to the less weedy areas.

We're 30-35 miles N of Gville. I'm leaning more an more to brassica and other things that can take higher grazing. Unless your plots are 2+ acres, beans/peas will have a hard time making it long enough to produce any meaningful forage before they get eaten.

Did you ever find a Ag lime dealer ? I get mine from a farm store 25 miles or less north of Gville.

There were two less than an acre and one that was 3 acres. The big one is the one that made me really mad. I did cowpeas and sunflowers in half and LABLAB in the other. It really and truly looks like a deer pen where the deer couldnt get out. They havent eaten everything but they have sure eaten enough that were going to have a huge problem with weeds that don't get shaded out in a couple of months. I'm considering overseeding something, maybe some leftover buckwheat if conditions are right. I'm not really sure about the overseeding thing so if anyone has any thoughts let me know.

How do I post images?

We generally use mayo fertilizer for lime and stuff. They are close. Overall we're going to have enough food for all of the deer this year I just wish there was a way to keep them out for a while. I would be willing to pay not tons, but a significant amount to keep them out. The goal was to provide adequate food so they couldnt eat all of it which I think is going to happen. I'm sure there are alot of people out there that wish they had the problem of having too many deer. Another thing is that either we had way more deer than I thought or all of this food plot stuff has brought a ton of additional deer to our farm already. Too many deer I guess is one of the best problems to have in life. Anyways thanks for letting me be so long winded again. If I only post a few times a year than it will even out to be like alot of short ones.

You need 40 posts to upload an image. But if you post your picture to a web host site like yahoo site builder (what I use for my web site) you can easily link the URL of the image on your web site into a thread without having 40 posts.

Usually plot saver works best on a 1-2 acre plot, I think the larger square you have over an acre, the more likely they jump it and get toward the middle where the smell doesn't bother them.

I've had intruders but never more than a 5% hit and most of the time it was when I failed to spray each week or mixed the mix to thin. Its also pretty critical to have a tight ribbon and have it at the recommended height and you really have to wet the ribbon so its dripping wet.

You might also try to spread 200-300 lbs per acre of some Milorganite within the plot every 2 weeks for a month as well as the plot saver.

I planted aeschynomene last May and had pretty good luck with it. I hunt in Levy County right outside of Bronson, FL. The aeschynomene grew well and it was more browse resistant than cowpeas. I have tried cowpeas for the last 2 yrs and they last about 3 weeks even with plotsaver. However, the aeschynomene grew well and this yr. it actually reseeded pretty well. The only downsides I have found is that it is hard to find and more expensive than cowpeas. Good luck I know it's hard to have decent food plots in FL, especially with limited resources.